Punta di Zambrone in Calabria Tirrenica

I thought I would link to the freely downloadable pdf of this amazing 500+ page compendium of research articles, published in 2021, concerning the Punta di Zambrone harbor site in Vibo Valentia. Unfortunately, they haven't had much success in the way of DNA analysis, other than to identify one person as having mtDNA HV4. But the archaeological finds are amazing. Very deep & systematic trade contacts with the Aegean world, suggesting that the site was either a trading emporium for the Monte Poro region or even a center of piracy (thin line between merchants and pirates). Suggests that Bronze Age Italians were much betters sailors than commonly imagined.

https://www.austriaca.at/0xc1aa5576_0x003c97a2.pdf

"The new data from Punta di Zambrone also contribute to a renewed perception of the modalities by which Aegean imports arrived in Italy. Traditional interpretations favored hypotheses proposing exchange processes of a predominantly economic and peaceful nature, as well as a substantially passive reception of Aegean goods by central Mediterranean communities.

"However, the Recent Bronze Age (RBA) historical reality was certainly more complex. It can be no accident that the phase of the greatest influx of Aegean imports to Punta di Zambrone . . . corresponds exactly with the growing presence in the Aegean--and of course in the same western regions with which Punta di Zambrone had privileged relations--of various artefacts originating from Italy. This phenomenon was at least partially connected to the mobility of groups from west to east. There can therefore be no doubt that we have to reconstruct two-way relationships, perhaps managed to some degree by small groups of Italian origin that gradually integrated with the populations of some Aegean regions.

"The discovery of the ivory statuette [from Crete] in particular opens up new questions regarding the nature of those exchange processes . . . . The interpretation that seems to us the most probable . . relates the arrival of this exceptional artefact to non-peaceful encounters, an explanatory hypothesis which seems well suited to that particular period that saw the destruction and sacking of the Mycenaean palaces and many other Aegean centers." -- pages 102 to 103

Already something like a city-state circa 1300 BCE ?

"The settlements on the Poro high plain, the inhabitants of which were mostly specialized in farming on the exceptionally fertile soils in that area, were integrated into a system with defensible settlements spread across the lower hill zone, which was mainly exploited by herding, and finally with the few coastal ports, of which one is Punta di Zambrone . . . . [This study presents] direct proof for the economic--and by extension probably political--integration of one region characterized by at least three ecological zones used in a diversified way by cooperating inhabitants of different settlement types in the course of the Bronze Age."

"[Metal analyses] demonstrate that communities of quite different sizes and integrated into various types of regional settlement networks were able to successfully tap into Mediterranean transport routes and to organize a constant supply of raw materials by maintaining far-reaching connections . . . . Alpine copper formed the basis for the production of bronze implements, dress accessories, and weapons . . . . One can now reconstruct an export system organized in such a way that this raw material passed through the Adriatic and Ionian seas and reached southern Calabria, where Punta di Zambrone, at the moment, is the southernmost settlement relying on those northern ore deposits . . . . Regarding their geographical extension, the coeval metallurgical and pottery koine of Subappenine (RBA) Italy are without comparison in Urnfield Europe." -- p. 24

"The analytical results of bronze objects from Punta di Zambrone also revealed that the local workshops had access to Cypriot copper."

"The various southern Italian regions and micro-regions each had their own importation, production and consumption patterns for Mycenaean, Minoan and Aegeanising pottery . . . . One can point to the predominantly locally made Mycenaeanising repertoire from Broglio di Trebisacce in the northern Sybaritis [Ionic Calabria]; to the exclusively imported Mycenaean and Minoan assemblage at Punta di Zambrone; and to the unparalleled quantities of painted and even unpainted pots found at Roca Vecchia and including both imported and Apulian products."

"On the Aegean side, the number of sites with well-stratified examples of Subappenine pottery in context with Minoan and Mycenaean ceramics is steadily growing . . . . Around 1200 BCE, when we witness the first rise in frequency of such Italian-related pottery in Greece . . . . One begins to get an impression of the new dynamics those seafarers from the Apennine Peninsula developed in a few decades. Apparently their ventures brought them as far as the Dodecanese, where [one finds] the earliest assemblage of Italian-type bronzes, a spearhead in combination with a Cetona sword in a tomb at Kas-Langadha . . . . The presence of warriors from Italy in this region was probably connected to pirates and in turn to the 'Sea Peoples'"

"As their regular import of copper originating from the Trentino shows, we have no reason to doubt the nautical abilities of the communities inhabiting the coasts of Italy. Some portion of the exotic objects of eastern provenance in their settlements may result from pirate raids; others may have changed hands through reciprocal gift or goods exchange that was able to develop on a more equal footing once the Mycenaean palace bureaucracy was gone"